


Decorations, or "Let's Hope We Never Find the Rest of That Santa Costume"

by winchysteria



Series: 25 Day Holiday OTP Challenge [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Christmas Fluff, M/M, Meddling Sam, Men of Letters Bunker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2014-12-02
Packaged: 2018-02-27 20:34:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2705885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winchysteria/pseuds/winchysteria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the <a href="http://winchysteria.tumblr.com/post/104120700743/christmas-otp-challenge">25 Day Holiday OTP Challenge</a> by gaytectives on Tumblr- day 1: getting out/putting up decorations<br/>In summary, the bunker really does have everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Decorations, or "Let's Hope We Never Find the Rest of That Santa Costume"

**Author's Note:**

> [Here I am on tumblr!](http://winchysteria.tumblr.com/)

"Dean!"

Perversely, Dean wished there had been alarm in Cas's voice. If there was danger, he could have gotten up from this goddamn table and away from these goddamn books and fought something. He could think of at least six or seven monsters off the top of his head that he would rather be dealing with right now than doing research.

"What?"

"Come look at this!"

Well, that was a sign if there ever was one. Dean stood, snatched his beer off the table, and meandered towards the sound of the angel's voice.

Cas was tucked into a spiral of storage shelves and filing boxes in the second or third junk closet down. He cradled a trunk of something Dean couldn't quite see, a happy uptick at the corners of his mouth. "Look, Dean," he said, turning the trunk towards the hunter. "Decorations." His gaze dropped from Dean back to the chest. "They used to celebrate the holidays here."

Dean raised his eyebrows. Holiday decorations they were, mostly Christmas stuff as far as he could tell, although there was definitely a menorah on top of those stockings in the corner. They were old, a little tarnished and a little worn, but still kind of beautiful- tinsel, stockings, porcelain figures peeking out from underneath newspaper wrappings. "Huh," he said aloud, although Cas wasn't really paying attention. "Looks like you found the set dressings from  _I Love Lucy._ " _  
_

"There's more, too," Cas said, pushing the trunk at Dean and turning back to the shelf. "A few boxes of ornaments. Several snowglobes, I think, in this one, and I'm almost sure this is part of a Santa Claus costume."

Dean looked up from where he was making a face at the tangles of string lights in the trunk. "Let's just hope we never find the rest of that costume."

Cas was already trying to balance several boxes in his arms, but he caught the hunter's skeptical expression. "I assume," he said, returning to the task of managing the rest of the decorations, "that the Winchesters do not ordinarily decorate for Christmas. I think that this year we should break tradition-" he was straightening up now, overburdened- "by adhering to it."

"Cas," Dean started. "We're not gonna-"

"You're blocking the exit."

Steamrolling was a good way to describe it, but regardless Sam returned from a grocery run to see Castiel setting up a nativity scene-  _"It's charming, despite the inaccuracy"-_ and his brother laser-focused at the library table, books pushed aside in favor of some really decrepit-looking electric lights. _  
_

"So is there a vengeful spirit attached to that ornament, or did someone kill Krampus in here?" Sam said with a snort, weaving through piles of crumpled newspaper towards the kitchen.

"Good one, Seinfeld. I think I can get, like, half of these to work, but if we were really doing this right we'd get maybe six more strings to fill things out."

Cas arranged a puff of cotton snow around the porcelain stable. "We are doing this right."

"That's a nice sentiment, Cas, but you know what I mean. People get trees, hang stockings. Buy each other presents."

A stocking hit Dean in the face before falling to the floor and he looked up to see Sam, unburdened of groceries and smirking so smugly Dean thought he should be getting facial cramps. "Well, we've got one of those things," his little brother said, leaning against a bookshelf like he was watching two puppies play-fight.

Cas, who had moved on to unrolling seemingly endless numbers of glass baubles from newspaper, perked up like a shark smelling blood. The bastard knew when someone else was on his side. "Sam's right. We should go 'all out,' in the festive sense of the phrase. Why not? We're at dead ends with everything else."

Dean opened his mouth to protest, but Sam was already on the offense. "So we're gonna need a tree," he said, ticking off his fingers. "Gifts. Cookies and candy probably. Hot chocolate. What did you say, Dean? Six more strings of lights? I'm sure we'll think of more as we go along; we're all out of practice. I can go back into town for most of that stuff. Dean, why don't you take Cas out to get a tree? Divide and conquer and all that. All right, go!"

Sam was halfway out the door before his brother could even start a sentence, self-satisfaction rolling off him in waves. He turned exasperatedly to Cas instead, fixing him with the same look he used to give Ben when he asked for a beer or a later bedtime. Angels were immune, apparently, because Cas just looked back at him with assured victory in his eyes. "Oh, whatever. Fine. Get in the car."

They were forced to take Cas's tan monstrosity, but Dean insisted on driving. Cas only put up a token fight, looking sedately out the passenger-side window as they drove towards deeper woods.

After a few minutes, Dean pulled over and got out without warning. Cas grabbed the axe out of the backseat before stepping, hesitantly, into the snow. It was only a few inches deep, but more was beginning to fall already as Dean clapped him on the shoulder and pushed further into the tree cover. The angel followed skeptically.

"This one looks good, right?" Dean said, gesturing to a slightly scraggly blue spruce about his height.

The angel tilted his head, considering. Dean took his silence for doubt. "Pines aren't native to Kansas, you know. You kinda take what you can get around here as far as Christmas trees go."

"It's not that, although I'm fairly sure this is also illegal," Cas responded.

The longer they stood there, the more Cas's hair collected snowflakes. It crossed Dean's mind that he looked a little like he'd been dusted with powdered sugar. "Well, yeah," he said, talking more to the tree than to his friend. "But if you wanna get technical, me and Sam are also wanted serial killers, and you've been missing for, like, five years."

He looked over to see Cas tilt his face to the forest floor and felt like a jackass. "I just mean, Cas, you know this isn't a Lifetime movie. With our luck, we're going to be stabbing something in the heart on Christmas Eve, and just- Sam and me are probably the worst people to be trying to celebrate things with. I wish like hell we could be real people doing the whole holiday thing, man. But with me around, that's not really something that happens."

Cas fixed him with a direct gaze, the kind that made Dean both unable and unwilling to move. Impossibly, there were snowflakes caught in his eyelashes. "I may be misunderstanding, but I believe all the real people are doing _the holiday thing_ with their families."

The hunter shifted uncomfortably, eyes flicking to the tree and back. "Mostly, yeah."

"Well, so am I."

Dean swallowed a dozen half-formed replies and just gave Cas a look that he hoped spoke for himself better than he could have.

Cas smiled almost imperceptibly, then jutted his chin towards the tree. "Now can we break the law already and get back to where it's warm?"


End file.
